A few days after we'd been in Charleston, the couple called their
friend Paul
Brown, president of the local activist group Keepers of the Mountains,
about what they feared was a spill-related problem.

"Our eggs are blue and when we cracked one open, it smelled like
licorice," Scott said over the phone to Brown late Tuesday
afternoon as he and I drove in the car.

Brown reported back to me several days later after visiting the
couple and helping to deliver the eggs to a testing agency within
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"The eggs definitely have a blue tint," Brown said by phone, "but
we didn't crack any open because the lab wanted all the samples
they could get."

The couple had told Brown that, in addition to the tinted eggs,
their chickens now have blue excrement and are fouling their
roost with it for the first time. The chickens are also
supposedly pecking each other like never before.

While there's no proof of contamination yet, we can confirm that
the eggs looked weird to Andrew Whelton, an
assistant professor of environmental engineering at the
University of Southern Alabama who is part of a team testing
water in the area.

"They were certainly odd looking," Whelton said over the phone
Tuesday afternoon. "They're not all blue, but it's there in
splotches. I've never seen anything like it."

We will follow up this story with the lab results when they
become available.